August 27, 2008

The stage, similar to structures used for rock concerts, has been set up at the 50-yard-line, the midpoint of Invesco Field, the stadium where the Denver Broncos' National Football League team plays.

Some 80,000 supporters will see Obama appear from between plywood columns painted off-white, reminiscent of Washington's Capitol building or even the White House, to accept the party's nomination for president.

So is this stage set going to seem like a Greek temple, with Obama as some phony god — from somewhere in Europe — or is it going remind us of the federal government — with Obama looking simply presidential? It's makes a big difference, and you never know what these rock concert type structures are going to look like until you see them in action.

106 comments:

Maybe they're going to put a big chair in the middle and have Obama sit in it and look like Lincoln at the Lincoln Memorial in DC. Or maybe Obama will emerge from it wearing a cape and holding a staff.

Obama is the new JFK.....or at least that's what they want us to think. When JFK gave his acceptance speech, he gave it at the LA Coliseum, whose columns resembles a Greek temple. Obama is going for that image.If Obam wins, expect Michelle to get pregnant with a little John John.

I'm not really sure how unusual this is. Bush in 2004 had a theatre in the round kind of projection into the audience, intended to place him as a man of the people. That was obviously planned, and designed. The difference is, we didn't read articles ahead of time discussing the emotional impact it was intended to have in the most cynical terms.

I'm not sure, if we saw this as it was intended to be seen, Thursday night, that we wouldn't just accept it exactly as intended.

That being said, it does seem a little more elaborate than the normal nomination backdrop. Whatever happened to flags?

I remember lots of talk prior to Bush's "Man in the Middle" speech. They showed the film of him throwing out the first pitch in Yankee Stadium when baseball resumed after 9/11. I remember them talking about clearing people out after Cheney's speech so as to convert the arena in time. His staging was covered.

will this temple be decorated with the "obama faux presidential" seal as well? For all the glowing commentary about Team Obama and Axlerod, Cedarford's bete noir, they are hitting nothing but clinkers in their messaging--from content to timing. Perhaps that explains why John McCain has closed the polls to a dead heat.

Life is bigger,It's bigger than youAnd you are not me.The lengths that I will go to,The distance in your eyes.Oh no, I've said too much.I set it up.

That's me in the corner.That's me in the spotlight,Losing my religion.Trying to keep up with you,And I don't know if I can do it.Oh no, I've said too much.I haven't said enough.

Consider this.The hint of the century.Consider this.The slip that brought meTo my knees failed.What if all these fantasiesCome flailing around?Now I've said too much.I thought that I heard you laughing.I thought that I heard you sing.I think I thought I saw you try.

The new politics is not about issues. It is about symbolism and illusion. It is the art of conjuring tricks, it is enchantment made to be thrilling to watch. It is mysterious and seeks to turn our attention to the charisma and charm of the politician with rapt fascination. It is prestidigitation at its very finest. Politicians are practitioners of the ancient arts of illusion. In effect, politics has been reduced to a cheap parlor trick.

It'll be interesting to see if the stage set actually does look like a miniature Greek Temple. I look forward to hearing Jennifer Hudson singing the National Anthem. (And what happened to all those prayers for rain! Apparently going unanswered).

Let me see if I have the timeline correct: Obama talks Thursday night, and then news stories on Friday focus on the wrap-up, Saturday McCain announces his VP and the Republicans start everything up in St. Paul (I liked Hillary!'s crack about the Twin Cities) on Monday.

Is it good or bad for the Republicans that they will be competing in the news with (potentially) a very strong hurricane (Gustav) in the Gulf of Mexico? By Sunday it's possible that evacuations will be starting along the Gulf Coast. The Democrats had little in the way of news interference (so far). I am not sure the same will be true of the Republicans.

Once it became clear that Obama would be the nominee, someone high up in the campaign must have decided that all that stood between him and the Presidency was getting the electorate to see him as a viable president. In campaign argot, he needs to "look presidential." This is the "it's the economy, stupid" of the Obama campaign and we're seeing it everywhere.

Obama gets put in a bubble: he needs to look presidential. He gets a seal: he needs to look presidential. He goes to Europe and meets with heads of government: he needs to look presidential. He gets a quasi-Air Force One: he needs to look presidential. He accepts the nomination in a football stadium from a set dressed to look like federal district Classical architecture: he needs to look presidential.

This has been drummed into the candidate so thoroughly that it even crops up in his off-the-cuff remarks, like how he doesn't look like those other presidents on our currency.

The campaigns not wrong. They do have to get Americans to think of fitting the role. But (a) they're being way too heavy handed about it, as the seal debacle should have shown them, and (b) it's not the only issue out there.

Bush in 2004 had a theatre in the round kind of projection into the audience, intended to place him as a man of the people. The difference is, we didn't read articles ahead of time discussing the emotional impact it was intended to have in the most cynical terms.

Well, if you want to talk about how Obama in 2008 is different from W in 2004, there is that little thing about voters having had four years to evaluate W's performance as President.

But yeah, sure, W was relected because of that totally awsome sound and light show at the RNC.

ron's snark about the carrier landing fails on the same point. W was, and remains until January 2009, CINC. Obama isn't anything but a pretender until then.

How long until Obama starts wearing hats - Fidel hats, Mommar hats, a fez, anything that befits his status as Savior? Oh, I know, someone could take a picture of him in a turban, that would be perfect.

Also Bush was and is a real pilot, which when you think about it is more than Obama has accomplished in his entire life outside of politics. I consider editor of the Harvard Law Review a political position.

For all of the put downs the Dems throw at Bush, his resume was about 100 times better in 2000 than Obama's today. Obama has never done much of anything. Yes, he went to good schools, but it is not like he followed that up by being a great attorney or legal scholar. Heck, John Edwards for all of his smarminess if a hundred times more influential and successful lawyer than Obama. What did Obama do after Harvard? Went back to Chicago, joined the right church, hooked up with Bill Ayers and Bernadine Dorn and muscled his way up the Chicago Democratic political machine. Outside of politics he has never accomplished anything and within politics he has never accomplished anything beyond winning an election.

Somewhere in that liberal facade, Ron, is a conservative eager to emerge. I suspect drill sgt will agree that no one does the National Anthem better than a military band. No frills--just the music as originally written (well not the british drinking song version)

Drudge's photo makes the stage set look rather less megalomaniac than everyone has been assuming. From the above comments, I expected something right out of "Triumph of the Will." The actual set, however, hardly seems adequate for the coronation of a Messiah.

Everyone (mostly) is dumping on O's stage set. But underneath the criticism is a general agreement that image matters, and the staging is important. Image, stage, actor and text have to work together if the message is to get through and the play is to be a success.

I don't have any interest in defending O's concept. It's grand in a vulgar and silly way, the image and the stage will work against his text, and the message will come out all wrong. But rather than just saying the same thing over and over again, can anyone here come up with an image and staging that could possibly work for O's big moment, a combination that would unite him as actor with his text (presumably a retooled version of what we've heard from him before) so that his passion play of Hope! and Change! might resonate?

O's production values suggest an old-fashioned Wagner production, with his columned pedestal doing the work of a little Valhalla. My guess is that he'd do better with something lighter, more modern and stripped down, in a smaller setting that wouldn't make him look like a little prop in danger of getting lost in an overblown set no one could take seriously. And, anyway, Valhalla didn't come out well in the end.

Wagner? Are you suggesting that Obama is an anti-semite? I thought the muslim meme had been put to bed already.

Based on what his disciples believe, the only appropriate stage setting would be one where he walks across some water, ascends a mount, feeds the multitude with loaves and fishes, then hovers above the stage while healing the halt and lame. And lame is the key word in understanding those who worship His Phoniness.

O's production values suggest an old-fashioned Wagner production, with his columned pedestal doing the work of a little Valhalla. My guess is that he'd do better with something lighter, more modern and stripped down, in a smaller setting that wouldn't make him look like a little prop in danger of getting lost in an overblown set no one could take seriously. And, anyway, Valhalla didn't come out well in the end.

Prof, if you decide to DVR the final night of this coronation, you better add at least an hour to the end time, cause I suspect that The One will run waaaaaay long as he is forced to pause over and over again as he basks in the adulation of the masses as they adore his every word, erupting into wild claps and cheers after nearly every sentence.

Maybe an extra 90 minutes, even.

(and I'm pissed off, I was going to do the "stonehenge" comparison, but you beat me to it)

Will The One break out with some little people to dance around the stage?

"But rather than just saying the same thing over and over again, can anyone here come up with an image and staging that could possibly work for O's big moment, a combination that would unite him as actor with his text (presumably a retooled version of what we've heard from him before) so that his passion play of Hope! and Change! might resonate?"

I don't really see the big deal. Rush Limbaugh has been ranting about it this morning "Greek Temples are the homes of the Gods" therefore this is all part of Obama's Messiah complex.

I could understand that, except for the fact that so many of our great public buildings use Greco-Roman temples for inspiration. You can't swing a dead cat in Washington DC without hitting three or four colonnades like the one seen in the Invesco set. The design is clearly intent on evoking thoughts of the US Capitol, the White House, the Supreme Court and the Lincoln Memorial. It doesn't seem unreasonable to me.

Thanks, stever. We'll not be in danger and we're already going through the motions of getting our finances, prescriptions, and important papers together; picking up tranqs for the pets; planning to empty the fridge and freezer (God save me from another fridge left unpowered for 4 week!); taking the backseat out of the PT Cruiser so we can stuff it full of pets and computers; filling up the gas tank; you get the idea...

Is it true that people in southern LA consider people from Shreveport as Yankees?

Wow. That's possible, but at least in New Orleans, we tend to think of Shreveport as more traditionally Southern. We have the Mediterranean/Carribean identity here. Up there, they're Baptists with Southern accents. Down here it's Catholic culture, with accents that run from Brooklynese to Cajun.

I do think a lot of us were "Drudged" per se on this one. That is, we bought into the textual descriptions provided by Drudge and ABC News before the pictures came out. There is a difference, in my eyes, between an "ancient greek temple", which is what Drudge and ABC News described it as, and what I saw in the picture.

When I finally saw the picture, it seemed to me that it looks like the Lincoln memorial, a classic Greek Doric design. Fine. Like I said, can we get him to skip the presidency if we build him a memorial now?

AlphaLiberal's rebuttal, as usual, is less clever than he would like it to be. Nobody from Virginia would confuse that design with classical Greek, unless they lived under a rock and had never seen the UVA Rotunda. That's an example of Palladian architecture. Obviously it's influenced from classical Greek design but again, the point is one of classification. Nobody confuses the White House for a Greek temple, either.

AlphaLiberal said..."Of course, when Republican do the exact same thing, that's fine!"

You - and the blog you linked to - have outdone yourselves in ignorance. The Virginia State GOP convention had a graphic depicting the Virginia State Capitol. Gee, can't imagine how that's just a little bit totally not the exact same thing! Honestly, do you people actually think - like, ever? Or is it just, talking point in hand, brain in neutral, mouth in gear?

In case Alpha has any further doubt that it's the VA capitol, here's a wide angle shot of the same stage, where you can clearly see that the backdrop includes not only the main body of the capitol but its wings too. Pillock.

The Lincoln Memorial it is, but forget about togas and stovepipe hats. Thursday night the golden boy will use the mini-temple at Invesco Field to appropriate the karma of Martin Luther King, who delivered his "I have a dream" speech from the memorial steps.

I don't know who designed the mini-temple, but it was one of Madonna's set designers, a Democrat from Texas, who did the glitzy Democratic Convention podium at Pepsi Center:

Beth, I used to watch the Justin Wilson cooking show on PBS and that was a joke he used to make. Not that I have a lot of experience there but it didn't seem to change much from east Texas/Arkansas/Mississippi until I got past Baton Rouge.

Santa Ana of Alamo fame once spent 25% of the Mexican national budget in order to construct an Aztec pyramid in which to bury his amputated leg. Kwame Nkrumah, the first president of Ghana, routinely spent about 25% of that country's budget in order to erect statues and memorials to himself about the state. There is something vaguely V.S. Naipul about Obama and his pomp. In an interview he was asked about hubris. He replied that he was the kind of person who never, ever became over confident. Megalomaniacs never suffer from hubris.

To add to what people are saying in reply to the Virginia example, we're talking about excusing Obama for something because of what a state Republican party did it.

Even if it were the same (it's not) most of use aren't going to vote in Virginia, so if they did something stupid and gauche, at most it would make the Virgina Republicans hypocrites, but I don't live in Virginia, Rush doesn't live in Virginia, a whole butt-load of people don't live in Virginia.

Simon addresses me: "You - and the blog you linked to - have outdone yourselves in ignorance. The Virginia State GOP convention had a graphic depicting the Virginia State Capitol. Gee, can't imagine how that's just a little bit totally not the exact same thing! Honestly, do you people actually think - like, ever? Or is it just, talking point in hand, brain in neutral, mouth in gear?"

Wha? And the White House has columns. And the Capitol Building has columns. And the Supreme Court. There's columns all over DC.

So what's your point anyway? Democrats can't use columns for stages but Republicans can.

Do you know you're making no damn sense at all? Trying to say that Obama is pretentious for using columns in his staging but George Bush and the VA Republicans are not when they use columns makes no damn sense.

Talk about running with talking points without thinking. Again, Republicans are insulting our intelligence and draining our civic debate of the last shred of intelligence.

You're moving the goalposts, doofus. The point of ridicule was not the columns. It was that it resembled "a miniature Greek temple."

Nobody confuses a Colonial-style house with front columns a Greek temple.Nobody confuses the White House with a Greek temple.Nobody confuses the UVA Rotunda with a Greek temple (despite being modeled after one, no less!)Nobody confuses the Virginia State Capitol with a Greek temple.

But, apparently, ABC News took a look at Obama's stage design and said "Greek temple".

So far as I can see, the set doesn't look anything like a Greek temple. There is a slight suggestion of classical architecture, which has a long history in this country since the first days of the republic--- it reminds us of the Constitution's roots in republican Rome and democratic Athens. Many American cities--- Cincinnati, Rome, Syracuse, Utica, and many American Athenses-- have names with similar classical alusions.

The Virginia State Capitol is actually a direct copy of a Roman temple-- one in Nimes, France, that its architect, Thomas Jefferson, deeply admired. He used another Roman temple--- the Pantheon in Rome--- as his model for the central building on the University of Virginia campus.

Actually AL it turns out it was a Reuters article, not ABC News, though they ran with it. And it was Drudge that likely kicked it up a notch.

I hate to break it to you but I'm still drunk on Rove's kool-aid. I mean, like I said, the set has turned out nicer than it initially did and now I like it. But I still think he's presumptuous. Sorry Senator, but there isn't a single question you've fielded yet that is inappropriate, and every time you smack one down with hostility it reflects on you. In particular, whining about how senseless a question about Ayers is, for instance, just invites more scrutiny and does nothing to actually answer the question. And now we learn how he sic'ed his attack dogs on WGN Radio for hosting Stanley Kurtz's Annenberg Challenge investigation.

No, I'm not done giving BHO and his supporters the business. And while I may feel differently now about the final result of the set design, I don't even feel bad about the ensuing dustup.

And to Ann's credit, right out of the gate she expressed the possibility that it would turn out fine: So is this stage set going to seem like a Greek temple, with Obama as some phony god — from somewhere in Europe — or is it going remind us of the federal government — with Obama looking simply presidential? It's makes a big difference, and you never know what these rock concert type structures are going to look like until you see them in action.